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I know this is going to make me sound like a bit of a 'grumpy bunny' ... or more likely an angry old biddy shaking her cane at the whippersnappers on her lawn .... but ... AI is killing my enjoyment of YouTube video consumption.  The voiceovers are the number one culprit. They CONSTANTLY mispronounce certain words, betraying themselves in the process. Yes, I know there are varying accents in the world, and I try never to hate on legit human mispronunciations. There are not only myriad dialects and accents within a language, it's always possible it's the speaker's L2 (or 3 or 4). And I heard somewhere that mispronouncing something often means you learned it by reading it (and reading should always be encouraged!).  And we probably all have at least one word in our native languages that stumped us the first time we read it instead of hearing it. I still remember mine: chaos. I had to read it aloud in class as a child, and I hadn't a clue that such a totally famil...

  With the nightmare that is Trump 2.0 I ask myself on a daily basis whether to stay or go.  Honestly, for reasons I've never known, I've just always assumed I would end my life in a different country than the one in which I was born.  Maybe it's a Sagittarius thing.  Maybe it was the faint shadow of fascism on the horizon I detected back in the Dubbya admin.  Maybe it was the fact my mother was in need of a caregiver for the last 25 years of her life and moving to a country where help could be better-afforded looked appealing.  Maybe it was the fact I fell in love with a European.  Maybe it was the fact I love teaching ESL.  Maybe it was all of that. Maybe it was none of it. I don't know. But considering leaving your country, even wanting to leave it, and feeling forced out are very different things.  As anyone who knows me will tell you, I have never (and will never) respond well to being told what to do (particularly by men).  I'm not...

    My word for 2025 is: Connect.  In the last couple years I've let all my human connections wither, and I should really change that!

  I can barely remember a time when I didn't have a planner, but I know I haven't been without one since I went back to school in 2012. I have one of those brains that spins into overdrive if I don't write down the things I need to do. For several years I've debated buying a Hobonichi Weeks. This year ... I gave in. Despite the 'Hobonichi Day Debacle', I got exactly what I wanted. Having never ordered from Hobonichi before I didn't even realize the chaos wasn't typical. Long story short, I ended up ordering from JetPens the next day. Since I was only getting a few things to try, the $28 shipping from Japan would have made it more expensive than the JetPens' mark-up anyway.  But the point is, all's well that ends well and I'm looking forward to moving into my Weeks asap (come on, November!).

In my search for the proverbial/mythical planner peace, I thought I might like a Hobonichi Weeks. Since it was Feb/Mar at the time, and I already had three other planners I was trying out, I decided to get an undated Fauxbonichi from Amazon for like $8.  Disliking the look of it, I bought a plastic cover and printed off the following insert based on a free dashboard design from Plan With Bee.  Click below to download/print my cover insert - just print it off, trim it down a bit, and insert in the plastic cover. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WnMe2wjLSlKTwuqtW9KL5CDTNRfd1TGZ/view?usp=sharing

So, probably in order to try to tame the chaos of my life, I have been diving deep into the planning world lately. I've been planning for years, eons even, but it used to be strictly functional (which is a polite way of saying my planners were ugly - not that all functional planning is ugly, but MINE WAS).  I would quickly scribble down stuff to be done, with any implement I had on hand, and cross things out and move them around to the point of being indecipherable by anyone but (hopefully) me. All with the no nonsense goal to get it down, get it done, and move on. I never decorated any of them, nor did I keep them for any reason - at the end of the year they went in the trash. But I never found the perfect planner - one that could accommodate every area of my life. And I still have not, so far. Though I am starting to decorate it, journal in it, and plan to keep them from now on. I would love to have a gorgeous BuJo, but I cannot manage to force myself to keep one due to the time ...

 In honor of National Tell a Fairy Tale Day I thought I'd share something I wrote awhile ago. It is a very familiar fairy tale, but told from a different character's point of view. Enjoy ;-) The Myth of The Englishman The fire was crackling, and the rain was tapping its usual song on the roof, but she heard the knock at the door. She’d been waiting and listening for it. She had sent for them hours ago when she had first become concerned. Finally, the two of them stood at her door – soaked to the bone. They removed their coats, and their otherwise crisp uniforms were now soggily hanging from their conspicuous frames. She was beside herself with worry, but manners dictated she offer the men some tea and cake.       “So, you say your husband is missing Ma’am?” one of the officers asked, as she poured the first cup of tea.       “Yes, sir.” she warbled. “And it’s not like him. Not like him at all. He never misses a meal! Breakfast, brunch, ...

  2020 was hard, 2021 was immeasurably worse, but 2022 nearly killed me (literally). A house fire, the deaths of my fur-babies, health problems forcing me to dropout of the MFA program I desperately wanted to do, and then, last but not least on the list of the universe beating the crap out of me, my mom passing away this past November.  I now find myself back in an MA program I hate while I look for a different one AND consider not getting an MA at all, and trying to sort out just about every aspect of my life. To reflect this, my word for 2023 is: EVOLVE And in as much as I am going through changes, so too will this blog evolve. I'd like to focus less on school and more on things I enjoy (like writing in general, including blogging). So, I would like to get more active on here (I know, I know - like I don't write that every other post). I would like to write more about writing and reading, but also expand to planning and productivity.  Deep breath ... fingers crossed .....

I've been meaning to post something on here about how amazing the MFA workshop was in LA, but in addition to feeling like I hadn't yet found the right words, time is also something that's been a bit lacking lately. Therefore, I've decided to post my favorite quotes from the lectures. Some of the best scenes are silent. - Jane Anderson  Conflict is not inherently dramatic – a tennis match is a conflict. You have to care for there to be drama. – Paul Gulino Writing is telling lies that speak the truth. – Deborah Starr Seibel If the story doesn’t end when a character gets what they want/need, then the story wasn’t ever about them. – Jon Vandergriff Get yourself in the room – invite yourself to the meeting. - Laura Brennan (good advice for life in general!) Happy to help, not eager to please. - Alex Fernandez We need to push ourselves to show our vulnerability to the point of writing something that makes us want to puke. - Meg Lefauve.

Without Lying Down: Screenwriter Frances Marion and the Powerful Women of Early Hollywood by Cari Beauchamp My rating: 5 of 5 stars Deeply engaging and very well-written book about Frances Marion (and some other fascinating women in her circle of friends) who blazed an impressive trail in screenwriting in fledgling Hollywood. It's a literal crying shame that more isn't known of these women, their interesting lives, and their brilliant contributions to storytelling and film. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in early Hollywood history, filmmaking, screenwriting, women writers, working women in the early 20th century, etc., etc. My major takeaways from the book are: writing may be a solitary endeavor, but creating a community of artists and uplifting other women aren't; the boldness of claiming your own worth, and expecting others to respect that, can change your life; and above all - writers save your papers! Apparently, the little which is known of France...

You Are a Badass at Making Money: Master the Mindset of Wealth by Jen Sincero My rating: 3 of 5 stars The book was more focused on my emotional relationship to money than I expected. There were some assumptions about those attitudes which I didn’t feel applied, so I didn’t feel as connected to this book as the previous Badass. But there were still some really good points and strong takeaways. It reminded me to own what I want. View all my reviews

WORK FROM HOME WHILE YOU ROAM: The Ultimate Guide to Jobs That Can Be Done From Anywhere by Robin Barrett My rating: 4 of 5 stars Excellent resource! I found out about this book by stumbling onto Robin Barrett’s YouTube channel. I saw a video in which she listed some interesting work from home options and decided the book was worth a try. It most definitely was. Despite doing my homework in looking for a new income stream there were still resources listed here that I didn’t already know about - and the explanations of the application processes and the payment methods saved me a lot of time in narrowing down the list to things I will actually pursue. There is a lot of repetition in the book - as there are sites which fall under more than one of the categories into which the book is organized. I read the entire book, but I would recommend that if other readers know which category they are most interested in, they just skip straight to that chapter to avoid the cross posting (for lack ...

So, I attempted the MA in English Lit program at my beloved NAU this past semester, and it is not for me. I want to create things and teach, but not critique everything to the point of hating reading and literature.  Don't get me wrong I learned some fascinating stuff from my textbooks this semester. But if I ever see anything to do with Alice, Wonderland, or Lewis Carrol again I might have a stroke (never liked them before and now they are on my list of triggers).  This semester has even managed to put a dent in my admiration of Mrs. Dalloway , if you can believe it (but I'm sure after a break, we'll make up). No shade on anyone who does want/pursue an MA in English Lit, but it's just not my calling in life.  I honestly have no idea how I managed to get good grades in this program since I spent most of my time feeling stressed/confused/stupid/full of BS.  Therefore, I'm switching to the MFA in TV and Screenwriting program from Stephens College that my heart wanted...

  Original title of the paper: Post Colonialism in Wonderland               When analyzing Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland using a post-colonialism approach, Alice herself can be viewed as a colonizer, perhaps even representing the British Empire of the nineteenth century. While literature is not “a passive reflection of history”, literature and history do feed off one another and each influence the other. (Parker 286). Whether Carroll intended to portray Alice as a representation of the British Empire, which ruled “roughly one quarter of the earth’s land and population” at one time (Parker 298), is unknowable (unless one wishes to be bogged down in trying to sort out the author’s intention). However, when applying the postcolonialism theory to Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , Alice does exhibit traits that are considered typical of a colonizer. She invades a space which is foreign to her, attempts to impose her own ...

  Original title of the paper: Gender, Feminism, and Marrying the Hangman             In Atwood’s Marrying the Hangman the reader finds a tale, based on a true story, in which a woman found guilty of stealing pretty clothes, must then beguile a man, sight unseen, in order to avoid being executed. And while she is written as a victim of patriarchal circumstance, she does, in the end create her own salvation via this beguiled man. Both the antique protagonist, and the poem’s modern “friends” with their “horror stories” all showcase the gender role these women are assigned and expected/allowed to live within, the lack of sisterly bonding between women, and how survival often requires a certain amount of what society might have judged as ‘unfeminine’ selfishness.             Gender is a “social class” (Cudd & Anderson 158) constructed by other people’s “cultural res...